Court rejects Wiranto's claim to 5.4m votes

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Indonesia's highest court has thrown out a challenge to last month's election result by presidential candidate and former defence chief Wiranto, who had complained that 5.4 million of his votes had not been counted.

The decision confirms the result already declared by the Election Commission that another former general, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, finished first, ahead of the President, Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Barring some unprecedented development, these two will be the candidates in next month's final round.

Nine judges of the new Constitutional Court found there was no evidence that the votes had gone missing from 26 of Indonesia's 32 provinces.

During the hearing, Wiranto's lawyers argued the former four-star commander should have finished with 31,721,448 votes, against 31,599,104 for second-placed President Megawati, but admitted they could produce no evidence of the missing votes.

Wiranto's failure to convince the court to add the votes to his total means he is now almost certain to miss out on the final round of the presidential election due on September 20 between the top two finishers in the July 5 poll.

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Chief Judge Jimly Asshiddiqie announced the unanimous decision. He said: "The Constitutional Court is of the opinion that the applicant in fact cannot prove that he has lost 5.4 million votes."

Before the judges had finished reading their 150-page decision to a packed courtroom, the chairman of Wiranto's election team, Slamat Effendi Yusuf, conceded they had lost the legal battle for Wiranto to become president.

Mr Yusuf said they could not provide proof because of the inaccessibility of documents held by the election commission which he claimed showed Wiranto had finished second.He said he accepted the decision, but refused to say he had lost.

"Why do you force me to say things you want me to say?" he asked. "Do you see this as a boxing match, that's win or lose?"

Mr Yusuf said Wiranto, Golkar officials and political allies would meet today to decide what steps would now be taken. Wiranto had earlier promised to accept the court's decision.

The elections were widely praised for the transparent way they were conducted.

Wiranto still has a separate legal action before the Supreme Court in which he has challenged an election commission decision to allow millions of votes originally ruled invalid because they had two holes punched in them.

But Mr Yusuf conceded even a win in the Supreme Court would not affect the election outcome, as the Constitutional Court was the only authority that could change the result.

In a concession to Wiranto's case, the court said the election commission should pay attention to Wiranto's complaint that the electronic publication of the preliminary results during counting of votes had given a misleading impression of the final result.

The commission should take this into account in the final round of the presidential election to take place in six weeks, the judges said.